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Communication between sensor board and Microcontroller. What hardware to use?

New Member

Hello everybody,
I'm in need to connect a sensor board with an SPI interface to a Teensy microcontroller. Unfortunately, the microcontroller is 3 meters away from the sensor board. SPI link seems not appropriate to handle such a distance.
What can I possibly use? New hardware?

New Member

Maybe it works, but I can't test it on hardware. For this project, I need a really robust data link.

It's a work in progress. Pressure sensors are 5xELVR-L01D-F1RT-I-NA5F by All Sensors + N.1 barometric pressure sensor. Data acquisition is carried out with an ADAS3022BSTZ multichannel data acquisition IC. The SPI communication interface is provided by the ADAS3022BSTZ.

Active Member

Also, consider buffering your outputs with proper line drivers and your inputs with Schmitt triggers (along with some filtering).

If you're doing the SPI in software, you could take multiple samples across the period of each data bit and check that they agree - or simply take the majority.
There's no scope for doing checksums (since it's just raw data) but you could do some simple validation checks - for example, if it's barometric pressure you'd not expect it to change quickly, so you could discard any samples that did not fit the general trand.

A lot of effort for no gain - he's only talking about 3m (not 3 miles) - the sensors are low speed, simply using a low speed SPI clock would allow far more than 3M with no bother (and is a simple software change - just change one value in the code). As Max suggested above, I'd use a screened cable - but I wouldn't ever have considered not doing so

Active Member

As I said, "consider" - just some ideas, certainly not mandatory. It depends of this is a one-off or a product, what the electrical/physical environment is and how often it is likely to be connected and disconnected.
But screened cable, yes, certainly.

New Member

As tomizett report maybe the point is that some information is missing. Hypothetically, the device is a part of the next generation of ADC/ADS from Basic Air Data. You find the former release here. Applications of the device include performance biking, HVAC, breath metering, metering, failure detection, user custom applications, and airborne aerodynamic identification(the probe was tested within a wind tunnel).

Well-Known Member

If it is for an aircraft application, light weight may be helpful and Ethernet cable is not exactly weight efficient for two signal cables and ground to travel 3-meters (also, Ethernet has 8-wires). You gah get away with much lighter gauge wire. Check DigiKey for the great search filerting tool when you search cable or wire.

New Member

gophert Yes, lightweight is better. I try to use only widely available and standard material.
We are now evaluating an alternative to the original circuitry. The idea is to give more calculation and communication power at the sensor board side, so we are evaluating a sensor board with an onboard microcontroller connected to the main ADC via a USB link. In this way, it is possible to continue to use the older AirDC units.